Vioxx Fiasco Continues

Filed Under Other - News & Events | 5 Comments

Have you heard the latest news about the whole Vioxx fiasco and Merck? Well if you have not been following the debacle, here’s a much simplified overview of what has happened so far as well as the latest update from March 17^th, 2009.

Vioxx is an anti-inflammatory drug that was approved by the FDA in 1999. Doctors thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and prescribed it to anyone that they could think to prescribe it to. More than 80 million people were prescribed this so called miracle drug.

But then people started having heart attacks and strokes. Merck quickly took the drug off the market because it was widely recognized that it was causing these serious problems. Many people died.

There were lawsuits of course, but many people were not compensated in any way. So a class action suit arose by plaintiffs who wanted to be reimbursed for their out of pocket expenses that came about because of their Vioxx use. It went to court in New Jersey. But the judge decided not to award the plaintiffs anything because the court thought it would simply be too difficult to administer. Imagine that; the courts siding with the great big drug company instead of siding with the people that got hurt at their hands.

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